It's Your World--If You Don't Like It, Change It: Activism for Teenagers

IT’S YOUR WORLD—IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, CHANGE IT

Activism for Teenagers

Mikki Halpin

SIMON PULSE

New York London Toronto Sydney

For Ruby, who has already changed the world

SIMON PULSE An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2004 by Mikki Halpin

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON PULSE, Series logo, and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Greg Stadnyk

The text of this book was set in Apollo and Swiss.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Simon Pulse edition September 2004

4 6 8 10 9 7 5

Library of Congress Control Number 2004109045

eISBN-13: 978-1-439-10858-1

ISBN-13: 978-0-689-87448-2

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Contents

Introduction

You can so change the world • why people become activists • one person can make a difference • choosing your cause • do your research • how this book works • a few more things

Helping Animals

The issues • be a responsible pet owner • make your home a cruelty-free zone • refuse dissection • make an animal research college guide • volunteer at a shelter • be an active citizen for local animals • start a PAWS chapter in your town • Shakira’s story • Emma’s story • the 5-minute activist • resources

Fighting Racism

The issues • test yourself for bias • plan a race matters movie night • what if your family is racist? • invite a speaker to your school • mobilize against hate groups by writing a letter to the editor • other ways to fight racism • Chika’s story • Emmanuel’s story • the 5-minute activist • resources

Saving the Environment

The issues • measure your environmental footprint • give your house an environmental makeover • start an environmental mailing list • find out if your school spends more on energy than on you • check your community water quality • identify local polluters • Adam’s story • David’s story • the 5-minute activist • resources

Ending War The issues • put up a peace poster • interview a veteran of war • organize a teach-in at your school • start a faith-based peace coalition • go to a big protest • Ana’s story •Hannah’s story • the 5-minute activist • resources

Fighting the Spread of HIV/AIDS

The issues • get tested • fight for comprehensive sex education • get local businesses to sign an anti-discrimination pledge • other activism ideas • Laura’s story • Henry’s story • the 5-minute activist • resources

Stopping School Violence and Bullying

The issues • make an anti-violence contract with your parents • distribute a flyer about the warning signs of possible school violence • create a bully box • connect with an at-risk youth • Britt’s story • Missy’s story • resources

Defending Women’s Rights

The issues • learn about feminist history • discuss feminism with someone from another generation • speak out about dating violence • find out if your school is Title IX compliant • have a letter-writing party to fight for women’s reproductive rights • Sara’s story • Erica’s story • the 5-minute activist • resources

Protecting Civil Rights and Civil Liberty

The issues • find out what data the government has on file about you • start an alternative school paper • do an art project about surveillance in your community • host a video screening about the Fourth Amendment • Ashley’s story • Alan’s story • resources

Promoting Tolerance Toward Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth

The issues • talk to your parents about an lgbtq issue in the news • start a gay/straight alliance at your school • assess whether your school is safe for lgbtq youth • make a voter guide • Sarah’s story • Stacey’s story • resources

Acknowledgments

General Activism Resources

Sources used in writing this book

Introduction

You Can So Change the World

There’s more to being a teenager than dating drama, shopping, and video games. You know this, but it probably seems like the rest of the world doesn’t. There are things you care about and things that you want to change. There are things that have to change. You have the power to change them.

Right now in the United States, twenty-six percent of the population is under eighteen. That’s more than seventy million people. Imagine what it would be like if you and everyone around you got to tell the world what you think. Don’t wait until you’re old enough to vote to take action. Starting today, starting right now, you can make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you.

This book is about activism, a word that is intimidating to a lot of people. When they hear about an activist, they imagine some crazy guy with a picket sign on the evening news, protesting something they’ve never even heard about. Well, that’s one kind of activist. I like to think of an activist as someone who acts on his or her beliefs and values.

Acting on your beliefs can happen in a lot of ways. You might buy only organic food, or you might circulate a petition to ask for organic food in your school cafeteria. Some activists are agitators; some aren’t. Some are connected to larger organizations, and others do things solo. Activism is a continuum, and you have to tailor your actions in a way that’s comfortable for you. But I bet that once you get going and see the changes you can make, you’ll find yourself becoming more and more outspoken and committed.

Here’s a good example of activism. Kayla Gernrich and Sara Stowell are sixteen-year-olds who live in Milton, Vermont. Their best friend, Allison Barkyoumb, had a heart condition that was life threatening—getting a heart transplant was her only option. Allison was on the transplant list for more than three weeks, and died while still waiting for a heart. Kayla and Sara, while grieving for their friend, learned that it’s often difficult for teenagers to get transplants because other teens don’t know that they can arrange to be donors.

In March 2003 Kayla and Sara started EarthAngels, a grassroots group that educates teenagers about organ donation and explains how to become a donor. Kayla and Sara could have done other things; they could have hooked up with a larger, national group and lobbied Congress to promote education about organ donation; they could have set up a scholarship in Allison’s name to give to heart transplant survivors; they could have done a fundraiser car wash and given the money to the American Heart Association. They are doing what feels right to them, and they know that they are making a difference. (The EarthAngels Web site is www.earthangelsorg.com.)

Why People Become Activists

People become activists for all sorts of reasons. Some people choose to speak out on an issue after losing a loved one, like Kayla and Sara did. Others might be dealing with injustice in their own lives, or seeing it around them, and decide to fight. Many activists feel a moral or religious obligation to help others and work toward the greater good. You might become an activist for what seem like purely selfish reasons—you don’t want to drink tap water with pollutants in it; that’s valid too.

But the reason that most people stay activists is this: It feels good. It feels right to give back and to be a part of something bigger than yourself. No matter how big of an individualist you are, you aren’t alone in this world, and helping others will also benefit you. Besides that, activism can be a lot of fun—you can meet others who share your beliefs, learn more about the world around you, and do things you never thought you’d do.

One Person Can Make a Difference

You might be thinking, Well, I’m just one person. How big of a difference can I make? There are two answers to that question. First, one person can totally make a difference. You are a citizen of the world, and what you do matters. Whether you are sitting at your computer writing letters, challenging a racist remark, or putting an anti-war sign in your window for the whole neighborhood to see, your actions are affecting people and making change. Second, you don’t have to go it alone. You can get your friends to do activist stuff with you, or you can hook up with people who are already working on the issue you are interested in.

Choosing Your Cause

It might be totally obvious to you what your cause is—you know already that you want to be an animal welfare activist or that you want to get involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS. If you know already, that’s great. Some people have a harder time figuring out exactly where they want to put their energies—there are a lot of issues out there. It’s worth taking a little time to figure out what you really want to do—if you try to do too much, you run the risk of burning out.

Think about what really bugs you. Is there one issue that seems to come up over and over in different ways? Try going through a week of your life writing down all of the things that strike you as wrong. (Okay, it might be a long list, but try it anyway.) Look down your list and see if there is a common theme. If your list contains a lot of things like The girls at my school get hassled by the guys in the hallways, Our science teacher always calls on guys first, and My female friends all seem to think that having unsafe sex is okay, then doing some women’s rights activism might be a good fit for you.

Here are some other things to keep in mind when choosing your cause:

There is no perfect, ideal issue. It would be nice if the sun came out and trumpets played when you hit on the right one, but that’s not going to happen.

Remember that everything is interrelated. If you choose to work on environmental issues, you are also indirectly helping animals. If you are active in promoting free speech, then your work might enable an anti-war activist to be heard.

Choosing a cause that benefits you directly is okay, and even desirable! If you and your brothers and sisters all have asthma, and you decide to work on getting better health services in your community, that’s just fine.

Along those lines, think about choosing a cause that you know your friends will be interested in also. It’s fun to do things in groups and they might have ideas you haven’t thought of yet.

It’s not unusual to be active in several causes, or to sometimes switch your focus. You might do a lot of animal welfare activism but also be on some civil rights mailing lists. Or maybe you start off working to change your school’s sex ed curriculum, and then become involved in volunteering at your local free clinic.

Do Your Research

Research your cause and arm yourself with facts. Online is a great place to research … up to a point. Google is your friend, but you can’t trust everything that comes up in a search engine. It’s good to verify things for yourself as much as possible. If a Web site claims that there is a superfund (that means extremely toxic) site in your neighborhood, cross-check it with the EPA site or www.scorecard.org, where you can enter your zip code and get environmental information back. Try not to go into an online trance, where you just keep clicking on more and more Web sites. Take notes and keep track of where you learn what.

Libraries are another good place to research. Not only do they have, well, books, but they also have tons of reference materials and librarians who can help you. Use reference material like old newspapers and magazines to learn about your cause and gather information you can use, like speeches your principal has made to the school board. The library is also a great place to get names and addresses you might need. The librarians can help you with your work and point you to things you wouldn’t find on your own. (Plus, librarians are often activists themselves! They work to prevent books and Web sites from being banned, to stop the government from looking at your private records, and to promote public access to information.)

Find out who the major activist groups are that work on your issue. You could go to a few of their meetings, or check out some newsletters to see what specific kinds of activism are happening in your area—marches, letter-writing campaigns, or whatever. Maybe you’ll join a campaign already in progress, or your research will spark an idea no one has thought of yet.

This book has chapters on many of the major issues that teenagers say they care about: racism, animal welfare, the environment, women’s rights, war, HIV/AIDS, civil rights, school violence, and the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. If you want to get going on one of these issues, then head right for that chapter. But you don’t need to limit yourself to the causes in this book. You might choose to become active in suicide prevention, domestic violence awareness, or anti-globalization—there are a million issues and sub-issues out there, and one of them is right for you. No matter what your cause, this book can help you choose the level of activism you are comfortable with and guide you on your way to becoming an activist.

How This Book Works

This book is organized into broad topical chapters. Each chapter begins with an introduction to the issue: who it affects, who is involved, what’s at stake, and what’s happening right now. The issues section also talks about what different activist groups are doing in relation to that topic.

Running down the side of the main chapter text are profiles of teenagers who are activists working on the chapter topic. The profiles are intentionally diverse; reading through them you can see that there is a level of commitment and engagement that suits every individual.

The main part of every chapter is suggestions for activism projects, divided into four sections: The At-Home Activist, The Campus Activist, The Community Activist, and The 5-Minute Activist. You should probably read through all of the project ideas before you decide which one you want to do—or you might end up doing more than one of them. If you don’t see a project that appeals to you, try reading the other chapters—many of the projects in the book can be adapted to other issues. You can also look through the resources at the end of each chapter—the Web sites that are listed will have even more ideas.

The At-Home Activist section has projects that you can do without even leaving your house. They might involve your family or be something that you do on your own. These projects are also good ones to start off with if you are new to activism. Don’t discount home-based activism—it can be very powerful. It’s not like you are an activist out in the world, and then you go home and stop being one. Your at-home work could lead to some big changes in your own personal behaviors and habits, or the behaviors of your entire household, and it can also help you reinforce values that led to your activism.

The project ideas for the Campus Activists tend to be a bit more elaborate and require a bit more time than the at-home activist projects do. (But they are still totally doable.) Being an activist at school is natural—you spend most of your time at school, so it’s a great place to speak your mind and try to change things. Activism at school also offers a lot of ways to involve your friends in what you are doing.

School offers a great place to reach your peers, and there are certainly a lot of things that need to change at most schools. But it can also be a little intimidating to think about being the person who initiates the change. That’s why most of the campus projects suggest you enlist others. Most teenagers who take a deep breath and are willing to stand up for what they think is right discover that there are a lot of other students who feel the same way they do. Planning your project carefully and getting others involved at the organizing level can ensure that your efforts are successful.

Community activism is probably the closest thing to what most people think of when they think of activism. A community activist project will involve your community—it will educate them, help them, or allow them to express their feelings on an important topic. Examples of community activism include an AIDS awareness campaign, fighting to get your state or city to recognize domestic partnerships, or a peace rally in the park. A community project generally offers everyone, even total strangers, the opportunity to be involved.

A community project requires that you reach out beyond your own circle of friends and family and make some new connections. This is called organizing—getting a community together to make change. That way you can split up tasks and get more done, as each of you develops areas of expertise. If you are planning to put AIDS awareness ads in your local paper, one person could work on getting the paper to donate the space, one could design the ads, while another one researches the best information to put in the ads.

In most of the chapters you’ll see a section called the 5-Minute Activist. The action projects in this section are super quick and easy things you can do on the Internet to benefit the cause(s) you care about. Basically these projects involve visiting one of two types of Web sites: click to e-mail and click to donate.

A click to e-mail Web site is a site with an interface that lets you quickly and easily send e-mails to select people (usually United States Senators and Representatives). Most sites have a boilerplate text written—you just add your name and click. Sometimes they ask you to enter your zip code so that they can send the e-mail to the congressperson who represents your area. The sites are updated often with new e-mails focused on recent events or pending legislation.

Letter writing can be an effective way to work within the system to effect change. You should know, though, that e-mails are not generally considered as effective as regular mail—senators and representatives know how easy it is to send an e-mail, so they pay more attention when someone takes the time to sit down and write a letter on paper. That said, collective e-mail campaigns have been known to raise awareness and draw attention to particular issues.

This book only recommends click to e-mail Web sites when click to donate sites for the chapter topic aren’t available. A click to donate site is set up in order to let anyone, anywhere, with a Net connection contribute to the charity of his or her choice. The way click to donate sites work is that the group who runs the site asks companies to be sponsors. Usually they ask companies whose products are related to the cause, like asking a pet food company to sponsor an animal rescue site. The company agrees to donate a certain amount of money to the charity for every click made to the donation button.

Why do companies do this? Well, it’s corporate philanthropy, which does exist (really!), but it’s also a form of advertising. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you should be aware. The corporation knows that when people go to the charity site to click, they will see the company’s logo, and perhaps associate that company with the good work the site is doing.

What a lot of people don’t realize about click to donate sites is that you can usually only click once per day. That sounds simple, but it’s not. The programs that tabulate the clicks calculate them on a twenty-four-hour cycle. That means that if you click one day at three p.m. and the next day at noon, your second click won’t be counted because twenty-four hours have not gone by.

There are ways to deal with this. You might want to download a little reminder program, such as the one at www.easydonations.net/clicktodonate.htm. It will alert you when it’s time to click. Setting a reminder up on your cell phone is a good idea too.

Efforts have been made to vet the Web sites listed in the 5-Minute Activist sections and throughout the book to make sure they are legit. They are sites that have been around for a while, and ones that are associated with reputable charities and organizations. Any specifics mentioned about a site were current as of this writing in June 2004. Feel free to do your own investigating too, of course. Exercise the same care you do elsewhere on the Internet—don’t give out personal information like your phone number, social security number, or address; don’t give out credit card information except on secure sites; and never agree to meet alone with someone you don’t know. For more information on Internet safety, check out www.safekids.com/safeteens/safeteens.htm.

The last section in every chapter is the resource section. This section lists Web sites and books that may be helpful to you as an activist. The materials have been chosen because they are informative, and also because they are specifically activist in nature—they have ideas for projects you can do and ways for you to connect with other activists, or they will otherwise help you in the projects you choose to do. At the very end of the book, the General Activism Resources section lists books and Web sites that are applicable to all areas of activism, like handbooks and organizing manuals.

A Few More Things

As you move forward, remember that the things that make you a good person also make you a good activist. Being kind and respectful to others, even if you disagree with them, will help every project you undertake go more smoothly. Sometimes it’s hard not to get caught up in a conflict with a person or a group and lose yourself in hating, but when you sense that happening, take a step back. Focus on the injustice you are fighting or the good you are doing. Use your anger to do what you can, and don’t waste it on people who aren’t open to change. Figure out a way to go around them.

Sometimes you might also need to go around people who are on the same side of the issues that you are. Some older activists and established activist groups aren’t as welcoming to young people as they could be. They might point you to a youth chapter that’s aimed at college and graduate students, or they might think you’d be a great office assistant until you’re old enough to be a real activist.

If this happens to you, you can stick around and try to change the group from within, or bail on them and find a place that’s a better fit—or you could start your own group. When New York City’s high school activists ran up against resistance from older activists, they formed Youth Bloc (www.youthbloc.org), which has now become a respected organization in its own right. (Youth Bloc members must be under eighteen or still in high school.)

Your parents or guardians might also express some skepticism when you start speaking out about the issues that are important to you. It’s possible they are also buying into that stereotype of the shallow teenager. But talking to your parents about your values—values you probably got from them—and why you want to act on them might convince them that this isn’t just an adolescent phase. It’s who you are.

Good luck with whatever you do!

Helping Animals

Every year in America, more than four million companion animals are needlessly put to death in shelters. Countless more are living on the streets, sick and hungry. Others are abused or neglected. Twenty million are being used in laboratories. Pro-animal activists work to save and care for these animals, and to be their advocates because they can’t speak for themselves. They set up no-kill shelters, rescue feral animals, and educate people about responsible pet ownership. Some activists work to discourage or end animal testing and the use of animals in research or education. They may also seek to ensure that any animal used in research does not suffer needlessly. Other animal welfare activists work toward preserving habitats for wild animals, ending sport hunting, and creating refuges for those whose habitat has been lost.

You are probably already familiar with some of the major animal activist organizations: the World Wildlife Fund, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Humane Society of the United States, the Philippe Cousteau Foundation, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Many people who care deeply about animals generously give money to support these institutions and their work.

You don’t need cash to donate if you want to contribute to animal welfare. One approach is to change your own behavior. Going vegetarian and seeking out cruelty-free products to use in your home are easy steps that anyone can take.